


Falling Again

by Caides



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 20:18:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caides/pseuds/Caides
Summary: At the end of 'Twice Upon a Time', the Doctor reaches out to Clara.





	Falling Again

**Author's Note:**

> A few lines are taken from Steven Moffat's work, including the Twelfth Doctor audition piece.

The Doctor was falling.

A bitter coldness chilled her to the bones as the deafening howl overwhelmed her senses. She could feel the intense force of the wind pushing up at her, and her hearts beat rapidly in tandem as she extended her arms and legs outward, making herself as un-aerodynamic as possible in a bid to slow her decent, which had now reached somewhere in the region of 140mph.

The speed was imperceptible, and she could hear nothing now but the roaring wind; the experience was utterly peaceful and serene.

She knew she had only a short time before certain death. But what did time mean to her?

_Rule 1 of dying; don't. Rule 2; Slow down. You've got the rest of your life. The faster you think, the slower it will pass: concentrate._

The voice was hers, and yet no longer; deep, masculine and Scottish. It was the voice she had possessed for a long time, the voice in which her mind still spoke to her. The words were familiar, and came to her in a stray thought, a dim and distant recollection from long, long ago.

 _Assume you're going to survive. Always assume that. Assume you've_ already _survived. There's a storeroom in your mind. Look the door, and think._

Time seemed to slow even further as she approached terminal velocity.

_This is my storeroom. I always imagine that I'm back in my TARDIS. Showing off. Telling you how I escaped, making you laugh. That's what I'm doing right now. I am falling, Clara. I'm dying._

_I have just been reborn, and already I am facing certain death._

The rebirth had been painful, as it always was. She had endured the searing agony of her bones compacting, her organs reshaping and reforming as the cells of her – his – body became undifferentiated, displaced and rearranged, re-differentiating into new cells and types of tissue. This time, it seemed, the regenerative process had produced a significant chromosomal difference from the Doctor's previous incarnations. Upon seeing her reflection on the TARDIS scanner screen, she had greeted the result with excitement. However, she considered that whether this new female body would survive for longer than a few minutes was – to coin a phrase – up in the air.

No sooner had the pain subsided and she had taken in her surroundings and new appearance, that the TARDIS had begun to convulse wildly, amid a seemingly critical systems crisis, the scanner warning of 'Multiple Operations Failures'. The craft had shifted horizontally, its doors parallel to the ground; they had flung open, and the ship's haunting Cloister Bell had tolled as the Doctor had lost her slender grip on the exploding control console and begun to plummet to the ground. The TARDIS had then dematerialised to who-knows-where.

The Doctor was suddenly thankful that she had been alone in the TARDIS during the disaster, for no human being could survive either a free fall from approximately 17,000 feet, or the dangerously low oxygen level at this altitude. She could store oxygen for several minutes, but that wouldn't do her any good if she couldn't somehow devise a way to reach the ground and miss.

She felt weightless, the only sound the beating of her hearts echoing in her head as a large autumn leaf drifted softly past her face, as if in a gentle breeze. She stared at it in disbelief, for she knew what it was and what it meant. She reached out and caught it, smiling to herself.

In her mind, the Doctor found herself back in the TARDIS, her 'storeroom', just as it had been before the regeneration. She was still holding the leaf, and she could feel the rough texture of it as she turned it over in her hand. She found herself humming a tune that for a moment, she couldn't quite place, until that familiar Scottish voice once again entered her mind.

_I think it is called..._

“Clara,” she said aloud, her own voice and accent sounding alien to her.

“Hello,” came a reply, startling her.

The Doctor wheeled around on her heels, coming face-to-face with a vision of radiant beauty beaming back at her.

Clara Oswald was standing by the console, still dressed in the clothes she had been wearing on her last day on Earth, when she had faced the raven on what she had called the trap street. The last time the Doctor had seen her had been, subjectively, less than an hour ago on the battlefield in Ypres, during the World War One Christmas truce in 1917, when his long-forgotten memories of her had been restored.

The Doctor grinned back at her old friend with glee and ran to the young woman, throwing her arms around her. She felt Clara return the embrace eagerly, and took in the curious but extremely pleasant mix of juniper berries and citrus, a scent once etched in his memory as Clara's favourite perfume.

“I've been looking for you,” the Doctor said softly.

“You forgot all about me,” Clara said wryly, with the slightest hint of an accusatory tone.

The Doctor nodded. “But I never stopped looking for you.”

Clara pulled away from her, her eyes glistening with tears, which she valiantly fought away.

“Well, look at you,” Clara said, her eyes darting up and down the Doctor's body. She raised an eyebrow and added; “old man.”

The Doctor smiled again. “I know. Result! Bit different in't it,” she said.

“'In't it'?” Clara parroted, detecting an unmistakeable Yorkshire twang in her friend's new voice. “You're a Northern lass.”

“Isn't it... isn't it,” the Doctor repeated to herself, placing emphasis on the 't's.

“Which is... flattering,” Clara continued, “although you may have missed the mark a tiny bit.”

“You think this is your fault?” the Doctor asked, facetiously.

“Oh, come on,” Clara replied. “You travelled with a Scot and then became one, I know how this works.”

The Doctor flashed a small but brilliant smile, and nodded. “Well,” she said, “I've actually gone south from Glasgow. I'd say this is, ooh...” She thought for a moment, listening to herself speak, before deciding, “West Yorkshire.”

Clara grinned. “That Yorkshire part of Gallifrey.”

“Lots of planets have a north,” the Doctor replied.

“Well, this is new,” Clara continued. “Finally managed to afford the upgrade?”

The Doctor knew that Clara was now referring to her gender. “Brilliant,” she affirmed.

Clara nodded. “I like it,” she said, gazing approvingly at her. “I _really_ like it.”

“Oh yeah? What would Jane say?”

Clara blinked in surprise. “You're a bit quicker on the uptake this time round.”

“You're still obsessed,” the Doctor replied. “Have you changed height?”

“No,” Clara said quickly, sounding almost indignant at the accusation.

“You sure?”

“Yes!” Clara said firmly. “It's you. Your height. You're the one who's changed.”

The Doctor stared at Clara's face. “And look at your nose,” she said sadly.

“What about my nose?” Clara said, taking a step back.

“It was really cute. I loved your nose, you should have kept it.” The Time Lord looked wistful.

“I did, it's the same nose, it's the same all of me,” Clara affirmed. “It's you, you're the one who's regenerated, remember?”

“Ah, right, yeah,” the Doctor nodded. She was silent for a moment, then raised her hand to her throat.

“It's gone!” she said suddenly.

“What has?” Clara asked.

“My Adam's Apple!”

Clara closed her eyes and sighed. “You don't have one anymore, Doctor. You're a woman now; we don't have Adam's Apples.”

The Doctor's hands moved to her breasts, and she drew breath to speak.

“Don't say a word,” Clara interjected quickly. “Yes, you have certain other physical differences too.”

The Doctor looked down. “These trousers feel a bit baggier than they used to.”

Clara rolled her eyes.

The Doctor suddenly winced, shutting her eyes tightly and bringing her palm to her forehead in a pained grimace.

“Doctor?” Clara said with concern, taking a step towards her.

The pain subsided, and the Doctor held out a hand to reassure Clara. “It's alright. It's just... my head. I think my brain might have shrunk.”

“Shrunk?” Clara asked, surprised.

“My brain contains one-hundred-billion neurons, with a hundred-trillion connections between them. It's structured a bit differently from yours but memories and information are stored in much the same way. My brain is restructured and re-wired during regeneration; carrying all that stuff over from one body to the next is a bit of a bumpy road. Not everything makes the trip in one piece. Like French.”

“French?”

“Synaptic pruning,” the Doctor replied. “I've forgotten French!”

“I'm sure it'll come back,” Clara assured her. “Doctor, why am I here?”

The Doctor looked at her intently. “You don't know, do you?”

Clara stared back at her expectantly.

“I just got you back. You're in my head. I remember everything like it was yesterday. I know there was an Ice Warrior on a submarine and a mummy on the Orient Express, I remember how we sat in the Cloisters, and... and I remember you. Before, there was just a dark shape. There was nothing. But I remember you, Clara; I've finally found you and now I might be about to die. Again.”

The Doctor's words trailed off and she thought for a moment. “So much for this one,” she said, indicating her new body. “I'm falling, Clara. I don't have long left.” She felt a lump in her throat, and her vision began to mist. “I need you.”

“Shh,” Clara said as she moved to the Doctor. “Not yet,” she said as she stroked her friend's hair.

There was a steely determination in the words that made the Doctor take notice.

Clara continued. “You're not gonna die. Too many of your enemies would want to throw a party, for one thing.”

“I need to think of a way out of this,” the Doctor stated. “I'm in free-fall. I only have a few minutes.”

“What happened?” Clara asked, urgently.

“If I didn't know better, I'd say the TARDIS... tipped me out.”

“Why would she do that?” Clara asked. “I mean, I know she wasn't exactly keen on me at first, but you...?”

“Blowing up her insides might have had something to do with it,” the Doctor replied, looking somewhat sheepish. “Rough regeneration.”

Clara sighed and shook her head. “Not again. Doctor, you've got to stop this; there are plenty of safe places in the TARDIS to regenerate, you've got to stop doing it in the control room! Find an open field, for crying out loud!”

The Doctor nodded furiously. “I know, I know. I should have looked for somewhere safe to park but no, I had to make one final speech.”

“Long and pretentious?” Clara nodded in weary understanding.

“Gets me every time,” the Doctor conceded. “Hang on; I don't remember telling you about that?”

“What?”

“The last time I almost blew up the TARDIS when I regenerated. How...? Ah. Yes. This isn't real is it,” the Doctor remembered.

Clara raised an eyebrow. “Not exactly. We're inside your head, remember?”

The Doctor nodded. “Sorry, I keep... drifting in and out. Focus.” The last word was directed at herself. In an instant, a long-forgotten memory resurfaced in the Doctor's mind; a thought that had once escaped the old man along with his broader memories of Clara. “Ashildr,” she said. “She was there when...” The Doctor turned to Clara. “What happened to Ashildr?”

Clara smiled. “If you don't know, then I don't know. Or maybe I do. Maybe this is the real me somehow and she and I went off and had lots of adventures. Maybe we're still sitting on an asteroid somewhere in that stolen TARDIS, trying to make sense of the manual. Maybe you'll find us one day.”

The Doctor sighed. “I hope so. If I do, it'll be thanks to you.”

“Me?”

“No, you,” she replied, referring to Ashildr's chosen moniker. “It's because of you that I'm still here. I should have died, long ago on Trenzalore, but you saved me.”

“The Time Lords helped a little,” Clara said.

“Don't think I ever forgot that,” the Doctor said, ignoring her flippant remark. “I think that's why you're here; you've saved me so many times.” The Doctor thought about Trenzalore, about the two occasions when Clara Oswald had intervened to save him, by jumping into his timestream to stop the Great Intelligence, and by convincing the Time Lords to grant him a new regeneration cycle. Then there had been the barn in the drylands of Gallifrey, when she had convinced three of him to abort his plan of using the Moment to destroy the planet of his birth and to save it instead.

Then there had been...

No, the Doctor thought. That wasn't possible. Was it? Something stirred in the distant recesses of her mind. Her last incarnation's recent encounter with her first self had jogged a buried memory as their minds had briefly touched.

Voices whispered in her head.

_“Grandfather, wait!”_

_“Come along, Susan! We have to get away.”_

_Their luggage, an old bronze trunk, hovered obediently a little further behind them. 'Susan', as she had now taken to calling herself, had no idea what it really was, or what it meant. The poor child was too young and too scared to ask what they had done wrong._

_“Away?” she asked. “Away from our own home?”_

_“It isn't our home anymore,” he said simply._

_“Grandfather, I'm frightened,” the young girl said, a tremble in her voice._

_“Hush, child,” he said sternly. “Over there.”_

_He pointed to one of the tall metal cylinders standing in the work dock, and the pair made their way towards it, crossing the repair shop. He reached into the pocket of the frock coat she had picked out for him, activating the remote control device he had obtained to open the door. With a gentle hand on Susan's shoulder, he led her in. As he looked around one last time before following her, an unwelcome voice, that of a young, female work technician, addressed him – thankfully, for her – simply by his title._

_“Doctor?”_

_“Yes?” he answered impatiently.“What is it? What do you want?”_

_“Sorry,” the young woman said, “but you're about to make a very big mistake.”_

_A chill passed down the old man's spine. Shock made him flush hot and then cold._

_A smile spread across the woman's face. “Don't steal that one, steal_ this _one.” She indicated the TARDIS capsule next to the one Susan had entered, against which the woman was leaning. “The navigation system's knackered but you'll have much more fun.”_

_The alarm klaxon was sounding and time – ironically – was of the essence, and something about the woman engendered an air of trust. He stared at her for just a moment, and in an instant of pure instinct, reached into the capsule and grabbed his granddaughter by the arm. She had been standing by the interior doors, waiting for him._

_Susan expressed shock at being yanked back out of the capsule so abruptly, letting out a slight yelp, and when he turned back in the direction of the young technician, he found to his surprise that she had gone._

_He motioned for Susan to quickly enter the adjacent TARDIS, and the Doctor was again surprised to find the ship already unlocked, as if it were waiting for them._

The Doctor looked into Clara's eyes. It had been her. All those years ago; right back at the beginning, from the day he had started running.

No. Earlier even than that.

_She remembered the tears._

_The soft, calm, reassuring whisper as he lay under the covers, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as the visitor stroked his hair._

_“Listen,” she said. “This is just a dream, but very clever people can hear dreams. So please, just listen. I know you're afraid...”_

_The Doctor was falling._

_“But being afraid is alright, because didn't anybody ever tell you? Fear is a superpower. Fear can make you faster, and cleverer, and stronger, and one day, you're gonna come back to this barn...”_

_The Doctor remembered standing in the drylands overlooking the barn, with a weapon of mass destruction slung over his back._

_“...and on that day, you're going to be very afraid indeed. But that's okay, because if you're very wise, and very strong, fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind._

_Fear is like a companion. A constant companion, always there. But that's okay, because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home._

_Fear makes companions of us all.”_

The Doctor's mouth hung open as Clara's hand caressed her cheek, before slowly leaning towards her.

The kiss was soft, tender and loving, and the Doctor found herself reciprocating in kind. The TARDIS's background hum faded away, replaced by a howling wind. An indefinable love long-forgotten suddenly found expression as the Doctor felt her naked body pressed against her own, as it had been on Trenzalore. He hadn't looked at her lustfully then, nor had he been certain that Clara was even aware that his visual cortex couldn't process holographic clothes, but she now remembered taking note of her natural state as if admiring a work of art.

“Naughty boy,” Clara said, reading her mind. “Or should I say, dirty old man?” Clara's voice carried a faint tone of amusement.

The Doctor smiled guiltily at her mock disapproval. “I'm neither of those things now.”

Clara hugged her more tightly. “You asked me once if you were a good man,” she whispered into her ear.

The Doctor said nothing.

Clara kissed her on the cheek. “You were,” she said. “The best.”

The Doctor smiled. “Hopefully, I will be again someday, maybe very soon; although it was nice being a woman for at least five minutes.” Her shoulders sagged.

“Oh, this isn't it, Doctor,” Clara said with remarkable assuredness. “You're gonna survive this, and you're gonna be a hero. You won't be cruel or cowardly, you'll never give up and never give in.”

The Doctor kissed Clara's forehead, and shook her head. “I hope so. I don't know who I am, or who I'm gonna be. I felt good about this one straight away, but... I still need to figure out how I'm gonna survive.”

“You will,” Clara said.

The Doctor shook her head again. “Wishful thinking,” she said. “You're not even really here.”

“Maybe not,” Clara replied. “Who knows?” She put her finger against her nose in a knowing, secretive gesture.

Tears filled the Doctor's eyes again. “I'm going to lose you again. Even if I survive, I don't know if I'll even remember this.”

Clara took a step back and said genuinely, “That I don't know, but right now, you have some thinking to do.”

The Doctor nodded solemnly.

“I'll say hi to Ashildr,” Clara said, before adding. “Say hi to Graham.”

“Who – ”

In a heartbeat, she was gone.

The Doctor was falling.

The deafening howl grew louder. It had been approximately thirteen seconds since the TARDIS had dematerialised, and the Doctor knew she had to keep thinking quickly.

She also knew that this wasn't the end. She was going to survive this.


End file.
